Review of accounting for goodwill: Historical to current perspectives

Accounting for goodwill is one of the most controversial issues in financial reporting. It has been on the agenda of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as well as the Accounting Standards Board of Australia, the UK, and the US. IASB has also identified accounting for intangible assets (including goodwill) as a high priority. The objective of the present paper is to review the developments of accounting standards for goodwill made by the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and the IASB. Reference to accounting and financial regulations is made to explore the effect of standard developments in promoting uniformity of practice in accounting for goodwill. Content analysis approach is adopted in this study. It concludes that the current regulations to account for goodwill provide little and further developments are still ahead.